It’s a new twist for the man who helped spark a national uproar two years ago over the role of human rights commissions in censoring hate speech.

That debate’s still raging, and it’s a nasty one.

Conservative pundits and a growing number of major media outlets have turned on the commissions, saying they risk becoming kangaroo courts where special interest groups can bully the media and jeopardize Canadians’ freedom of speech.

On the other side, there are calls to preserve what advocates insist is a needed tool in the battle against hate speech – and a way to hold mainstream media outlets to account for biased journalism.

Soharwardy fired an early salvo in the battle, lodging a human rights complaint against publisher Ezra Levant. In February 2006, Levant published the notorious Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the now-defunct Western Standard magazine.

At the time, Soharwardy argued the cartoons were a form of hate speech.

However, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada has been through a lot since then. You might say he’s had a change of heart about hate.

He says he hopes his planned Freedom of Speech Centre can help Muslims and all Canadians explore ways to balance hate speech and free speech.

He said he wants to help Muslims newly arrived from more repressive cultures to understand why, for example, Canadians can freely mock religions – and why that right to offend is an important pillar of democracy.

He hopes to open the centre in January.

With his volte-face, Soharwardy has added his voice to a growing chorus calling for human rights commissions to get out of the business of sanctioning public discourse and deciding what qualifies as hate speech.

This is not the stuff of calm, reasoned debate. There are columns about how Muslims are taking over the world, there are blogs saying the holocaust never happened.

Still, editorials calling for changes have appeared in the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and elsewhere.

Those fighting to have the section repealed got a boost last month from free speech expert and University of Windsor professor Richard Moon.

Moon was asked by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to look into the debate. His report said the best-case scenario would be to get rid of Section 13 and leave hate speech to the police.

Alternatively, Moon suggested, the wording of the act should be changed so that the definition of hate speech is explicitly defined as language that “advocates or justifies violence against the members of an identifiable group.”

That was music to the ears of conservative pundits such as Levant and author and blogger Mark Steyn, who have long complained the commissions aren’t fair to the accused.

Their grievances? There is no presumption of innocence; truth is not a defence; and if a complaint in found to have no merit, there is no compensation offered to the wrongly accused.

All of which, these critics say, remains beside the point: the right to free speech is absolute in a free society.

“The only reason we’re talking about this is because of censorship,” Levant said.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission says it wants to get public reaction to the Moon report, then submit it to Parliament by the middle of next year.

“As freethinking, democratic individuals in a democracy, we don’t have a right not to be offended,” he said.

Martin has introduced a private member’s motion calling on the government to repeal Section 13. He said he’s also been lobbying to have the justice committee hold a public, televised hearing on the issue.

While Moon’s report partly sided with the conservative pundits, the expert also calls their criticisms largely “overblown.”

Moon stressed that the media have a responsibility to provide fair and balanced content.

His report suggested the creation of a national press council. It would have the power to investigate complaints of human rights discrimination or bias in journalism, and could force a media outlet to publicize a judgment against it, should one be made.

The Canadian Association of Journalists has condemned the idea, saying it smacks of government censorship.

The notion does appeal to some, including Khurrum Awan. He was one of the law students who filed a failed complaint against Maclean’s magazine over its decision to publish online an excerpt from Steyn’s book, America Alone. The excerpt alleges that Muslims’ booming populations numbers could threaten Western democracies.

“There has been a lot of media and political heat around our complaint,” Awan said. “We do feel if that heat had not been there, the decision may have been different.”

He said currently the human rights commissions are the “only meaningful avenue of holding our media accountable for Canadians,” but said his group would have preferred to air their complaint at a press council – had Maclean’s belonged to such a body.

Like Awan, human rights lawyer Pearl Eliadis says the media haven’t done a good job of fairly examining the issue – because they are vested in the outcome of the debate.

She says there are good reasons to keep hate speech under the mandate of human rights commissions, even if it means amending the legislation. She shoots down criticism from pundits she calls “controversy entrepreneurs.”

Section 13, which dates back to the inception of the federal act in 1977, was originally meant to deal with the issue of “hate lines,” telephone numbers where callers could hear pre-recorded racist messages.

In 2001, the federal government amended the section so that it also covered hate speech online.

There, arguably, is where the problem began.

With the explosion of the Internet – including newspapers publishing online, political bloggers, etc. – suddenly the commissions were in a position to oversee and judge journalism.

“The fact that the mainstream media are now covered by the legislation is something none of us anticipated or foresaw,” said Philippe Dufresne, director and senior council for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The commission can award compensation to victims of hate speech to a maximum of $20,000. It can also levy a penalty of as much as $10,000.

Soharwardy’s complaint against Levant and the high-profile case against Maclean’s became twin lightning rods for those who said the human rights commission was going too far.

Levant said he’s spent $100,000 on legal fees dealing with the human rights complaints against him that have dragged on for a total of 900 days.

For the record, he doesn’t buy Soharwardy’s conversion in the least. But he said it’s clear opinion is piling up against the commissions.

“The only people in the country who still support it are those who have a direct financial stake in it,” he said.

He dismissed the argument that because he and Maclean’s won their cases the system is working.

“Mark Steyn and I were a political problem for them,” he says of the human rights commission. “We were let go, whereas people who can’t afford pricey lawyers . . . they get crushed. That’s a form of corruption.”

As for Soharwardy, the imam’s change of heart took time – and included spending a while looking down the barrel of a human rights complaint that was aimed squarely at him.

Soharwardy was accused of discriminating against several women at his mosque.

“I understand the pain that people go through when they face a complaint at the human rights commission,” he said. “If a frivolous complaint has been filed, then the defendant is still on the hook to defend himself.”

But he insists it wasn’t the complaint against him but his concerns about his religious freedom that prompted him to turn his back on the process.

“Freedom of religion is very dear to me,” he said, explaining he worries that restricting speech could lead to limits on his right to express his religious beliefs.

Soharwardy said he believes the federal government needs to do a better of educating newcomers to Canada about freedom of speech, as well its consequences, both good and bad.

“People in any Muslim country people will not make fun or should not make fun of any religions,” he said.

“Here, people go on air and make fun of Jesus Christ. . . . That is a very shocking thing for a Muslim. People are not used to this kind of freedom.”

He said he believes freedom of speech is about more than just public discourse – it’s also about how different generations relate within families.

He points to family violence, some of which is the result of tensions flaring between immigrant parents and their western-raised children.

Freedom of speech is crucial so that everyone’s voice is heard, he said.

“That freedom will save a family from destruction,” he said. “We can resolve domestic violence, we can resolve women abuse, child abuse.”

What proponents of Section 13 stress is that the system offers a more appropriate range of remedies than the criminal justice system.

The system, they say, works to find compromises and resolve disputes.

“Words have power; and terrible words have terrible power,” said Bernie M. Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

He argues that an amended act – along the lines of what Moon’s report recommends – is the best option.

“I know that there is a clamour by some to jump on the band wagon where they feel that any law that limits speech of any kind is harmful, but our position is that if one can find the right balance, it makes us a better society.”